Facing Fear on the Yoga Mat: What Plow Pose Taught Me About Courage

This month at Shabach Yoga, our theme is Practice Facing Your Fears, and our pose of the month is Halasana (Plow Pose). When I shared this in my email last week, I thought I was inviting our community to move towards the things that scare us—Halasana has been a pose that I’ve been afraid to practice for years.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with degenerative disc disease (DDD) in my lumbar spine. It isn't something I dwell on, but it is something I am learning to respect. In my private practice, I’ve had to set my ego aside and use props, modifying poses when necessary. I’ve had to remind myself that yoga is never about forcing the body into a shape.

However, last Thursday,

Sometimes the most important part of our practice isn't the pose itself—it's learning to accept the support that's been there all along.

as I was trying to make a video demonstrating plow pose, I let that wisdom fly out the window.

Instead of approaching Halasana with the same patience and humility I would encourage in others, I let my ego take the lead. A quiet voice within me insisted that facing my fear meant forcing myself into the posture. So I ignored the truth about my body’s limitations.

As a result, I have been in constant pain since Thursday. Yet, as difficult as the physical discomfort has been, it isn't what has occupied my thoughts the most. What has lingered is the fear that arrived afterward—the quiet uncertainty that asks questions I cannot yet answer.

What if my practice is changing? What if this is simply what happens as I grow older? What if there are other postures I love—deep backbends, binds, and twists, for example—that my body will eventually ask me to release?

Those questions have been surprisingly difficult to sit with because yoga has been woven into the fabric of my life for almost 20 years. The thought that my practice might need to evolve stirred something in me that reached far beyond my lumbar spine.

As I've prayed, reflected, and rested, I've realized that my greatest struggle isn't the injury itself. It's the uncertainty. I've spent a great deal of time trying to determine exactly what I'm afraid of. Is it failure? Is it success? Or is it simply the fear that life will continue to ask me to adapt in ways I didn't choose?

What I do know is that fear has an uncanny ability to disguise itself. Sometimes it appears as perfectionism. Sometimes as hesitation. Sometimes as control. And sometimes, as I learned in Plow Pose, it hides behind ego, convincing us that we have nothing left to learn.

As an editor and an unapologetic lover of words, I often find myself turning to etymology whenever I'm searching for meaning. The word courage, which I love so much that it's actually tattooed on my left arm, comes from the Old French corage, which is rooted in the Latin word cor, meaning heart.

Perhaps courage has never been about the absence of fear. Perhaps it has always been about moving forward with an open heart, even when fear insists that we stay where we are.

Courage is not forcing my body into a posture that causes pain simply because my pride wants to prove that I still can. Courage is listening carefully when my body whispers that it needs something different today. It is reaching for a prop without embarrassment, modifying without apology, and accepting that wisdom often looks far less impressive than ambition.

The older I become, the more convinced I am that this is true not only on the yoga mat but in every area of life. There are seasons when strength is expressed through perseverance, and there are seasons when strength is expressed through restraint.

Looking back, I realize Halasana wasn't the deepest fear I was facing. Beneath my hesitation to practice the pose was a quieter fear: that my practice is changing, that my body is changing, and that I will have to learn a new way of practicing. Accepting that reality requires a far deeper courage than simply rolling into Plow Pose.

I hope to listen more carefully to the body God has entrusted to me. I hope to recognize the subtle difference between courage and ego. And I hope to remember that faith is not measured by how much I can accomplish but by how willingly I trust God when life asks me to practice differently than I did before.

Journal Prompts

1. Where has fear been quietly shaping my decisions, and what might it be revealing about what I value most?

2. In what area of my life is God inviting me to replace striving with wisdom?

3. What part of my identity am I holding so tightly that I'm afraid to let it evolve?

4. What would it look like for me to take one faithful step this month, trusting God more than my fear?